It’s Finally Out — Becoming Rory

Thanks to Dani and the whole crew at Love Bytes for having me! This is Ashavan Doyon and I’m here today to talk about Becoming Rory, book 4 of the College Rose Romances.

It’s finally out.

I get to breathe a sigh of relief. A year ago at this time, all four of the College Rose Romances were out of print, a victim of the press that had published my cherished new adult series folding and leaving so many of us as authors scrambling. Becoming Rory was the final book of the series that they published and the only one for which the promised paperback never appeared. That was one of the first signs of trouble, really.

So a year ago, I was scrambling, and to be honest, I was terrified. This series was my baby. I was most of the way through writing the next book, and suddenly all the previous books were out of print. My only saving grace was that I had secured my rights letter.

Slowly Aidan lived, and with him the triangle that got everyone so angry with me. Then Steven, and how I love that even now, I’m shocked when Steven shows me his secret. Following Andrew means getting a little dirty. But that was always part of the lesson about Drew, learning just how far he would go to do what he felt was right, to protect his family.

That just left Lawrence, whose story starts as he tries to reinvent himself. Not that you really meet Lawrence. You know about him. He’s a lit geek that Aidan used to try to forget about his love affair with Michael—like he did with Drew. And at first, I thought that would make the stories a lot alike. I was never going to write a story about Lawrence. But, truth be told, I wrote most of it before there was ever a chapter one for Andrew’s Prayer.

Why?

Because when I went to write Drew, what I got was Rory. A character who was in the midst of that struggle that I remembered so well from my youth: How can I be out? How can I be gay? How can I let anyone see what’s inside? But that’s what Rory was, his attempt to be out, and to be gay and to let people see what he felt inside.

Imagine Rory’s surprise when embracing that lands him a load of trouble in the person of Danny Smits. But that’s what romance is about. Rory meets Danny—and there’s a spark (and also sex, quite a lot). But can what started as an anonymous hookup at a party lead to more?

Well obviously, it can. But it probably isn’t the easiest way to start a relationship and Rory finds that out fast. Rory also finds out there’s a whole lot more to Danny than appearances, and a lot of it means questioning his own assumptions about what he wants and what the future holds.

I hope you’ll join Rory on that trip to discovery.

Becoming Rory

Rory Graeble returns to college determined to reinvent himself. Too many years have been wasted with masks, but becoming a student leader is a step Rory isn’t sure he’s ready for. A new identity takes more than just a new nickname, and Rory knows he has to take the chances that his old self would never risk. When that chance is a party that ends with an anonymous hot skater’s tongue down his throat and a phone number in his pocket, Rory knows what he has to do.

Danny Smits never expected to see stuffy lit geek Rory Graeble trying to be out, trying to be proud, trying to be… Rory. It’s damned sexy, and too much for the entrepreneurial skater to resist. When Rory calls him back the day after the party, Danny knows Rory has changed. But will Danny’s haunted past deter Rory? Or will Rory embrace the chance to experience everything the closet had stolen away? Danny believes in keeping things real, in a brutal honesty he knows means Rory will run screaming.